


Venom

by thejilyship



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Inspired by The Hunger Games, au jily, jily, well a hopeful ending anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:07:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28165980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thejilyship/pseuds/thejilyship
Summary: Fear is a poison. It can take even the most beautiful hearts and shatter them. And when James finally wakes up, he is terrified.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 18
Kudos: 53





	Venom

“He’s awake.”

Lily’s hand slipped off the table and she jolted upright. For the last few days, her body seemed to have been getting heavier, and heavier. She had been standing at angles, her head on her shoulder, her arms hanging at her sides.

“Awake?” She cleared her throat, hearing her hoarse from disuse.

She’d started to think that he might not wake up.

The healers couldn’t tell what had happened to him. They couldn’t tell what was wrong with him now.

But he was awake.

She looked at Peter, who had come to get her. “Is he okay? Has he said anything yet?” Her feet finally started moving toward James’ hospital room.

“He was telling the healers what happened, but I came to get you.” He said, putting a hand on her back as she reached him.

“Thank you.”

She heard his voice before she saw him. She almost stopped walking in the hallway, but Peter’s hand kept her moving.

“They came up behind me,” James said. “There was only two of them, but I didn’t hear them- is Frank okay?”

“He’s fine, mate.” Sirius said.

Lily paused in the doorway, her hand over her heart. Peter squeezed past her and took his seat next to Remus, who was sitting on the edge of his seat, a big smile on his face.

“He got beat up a bit, but they didn’t take him. He’s at home with Alice right now.” James turned to look at Remus as he spoke, and Lily caught a glimpse of his eyes for the first time in over a week. He didn’t seem to notice her though, which was unusual, because he always seemed to notice her before anyone else.

She supposed she would give him a pass since he had been unconscious since they found him three days ago. 

The other three boys were looking at her now though, and James noticed that. He turned toward the doorway and Lily stepped into the room. “It’s about damn time, Potter.” She muttered, and Sirius laughed, relief evident. Lily felt it too, bubbling up in her chest, down to the tips of her toes.

He was alright. He was alive.

He was… _glaring_ at her.

She reached out for him and saw him tense and she pulled her hand back as though she’d been burned.

“James?” She walked around to the side of the bed and stood in front of him, keeping her hands to herself now. “James, are you alright? Do you need a healer? Are you in-“

And then he lunged at her.

His hands wrapped around her neck, he slammed her body against the wall behind her, and she knew that she was in pain, she knew that she couldn’t breathe, but all she could focus on was the look of complete and utter hatred he wore.

And then she was gasping for air and she saw Sirius trying to pry him away from her, he saw Peter shouting in the hallway for a healer, Remus was trying to get James’ hands off her throat and when her vision started to go black, she thought that somehow this was going to be how she died. At the hands of her husband, while his best friends tried in vain to pull him off of her.

He was shouting at her, but she couldn’t hear him, she couldn’t make sense of his words.

And then there was a sickening crack, and James slumped to the floor.

Lily brought her hands to her throat and slide down the wall, pulling her knees up to keep from touching James.

She looked up and Sirius was standing there with a metal bedpan in his hands.

He saw Lily staring at him and he looked from the pan in his hands down to James. “I had to get him off you.” He was shocked that he’d done that. “He was going to- I had to.”

Remus knelt down. “Can you stand?”

“Ja-“ But she couldn’t get his name out, his throat was on fire, she felt like she was crying. Remus was calm though.

“He’s fine. Sirius just knocked him out. We need to get you to a healer.”

Lily wanted to tell him that she was fine, but she could tell by the way that Peter was gaping at her in horror, that that wasn’t the case. She felt something warm and sticky drip down over her mouth.

She looked back at James as the taste of iron overtook her senses.

“He was calling you the traitor.” Peter said, and Remus shot him a look.

“Come on, Lils. Let’s get you off the floor.”

She kept looking at James.

“I’ll get him,” Sirius said. “You go with Remus.”

“Before you bleed all over the floor,” Remus said, pulling her to her feet. Once on her feet, she felt herself being pulled back to the ground and her vision got dark again.

oOo

She healed too quickly, and before she knew it, she looked as though the entire incident had never happened.

This made it easy to convince herself that it _hadn’t_ happened. That it was some kind of fever dream that had come about from stress and a lack of sleep.

James would never do that to her.

Not only because he’d loved her since he was fourteen, but because he would never do that to anyone.

She wasn’t allowed in James room now.

When he came to, after Sirius had knocked him out with a bedpan, James had gone ballistic again. He didn’t try and hurt Sirius or Remus or Peter, but he yelled at them for helping Lily get away. He shouted at them about how dangerous Lily was and how she wanted to kill them all and how they had given her another opportunity to do it.

She sat outside his room and cried as he went on and on about how much he hated her. How much he despised her.

Remus came out and sat with her. “Go home, Lily.”

“I can’t.” She said, her throat still a bit raw even after two days and more than a dozen potions.

“You don’t need to put yourself through this.”

“He’s hurting,” She covered her face. “He’s hurting and I can’t leave him.”

James was getting loud again, shouting about how Lily had been working with the Death Eaters all along, how she needed to be killed. How she had been the one to arrange his kidnapping. How she had tortured him for days before he’d escaped.

Remus reached out and squeezed her hand.

“You’re not even going to question me?” She turned her head and looked at Remus.

He looked surprised, though she didn’t know why. There was a traitor in the Order, they had all known for a while now. “Lily, someone did this to him. Even if you were a traitor, which I know that you’re not, but even if you were and James found out, he would never try and cause you harm. He would never carry on like this.”

“How?” She couldn’t rub at her eyes without being in danger of bursting the blood vessels again, so she had to wait until the tears fell before she could wipe them away. “How did they do this?”

“I don’t know.” He squeezed her hand. “But we’ll figure it out.”

oOo

“It’s fear conditioning.” The healer said. Sirius and Lily were sitting across from them in their office since they couldn’t talk in front of James. “Whoever was holding him, they took out memories and made him relive them, but when he relived them, they added new stimuli, manipulated certain events to make you seem like a threat.”

Lily’s heart was pounding. She felt like she hadn’t been able to breath in weeks.

“Can you fix it?” Sirius asked, his elbows on his knees.

The healer sighed and rubbed his hand over his eyes. “I don’t know. Fear is one of the most difficult emotions to overcome. And there isn’t a way to take the memories out and scrub them clean. Right now, he has two sets of memories, the original, and the false memory. The original memories seem to be suppressed, and if that is through magic, then we might be able to fix that. If it’s not through magic-“

“What else would be causing that?” Sirius shouted, throwing his hands in the air. “He tried to kill his wife! No part of James would have done that.”

The healer nodded. Lily wished she could remember his name. “I know. I have a few ideas on how we can help him. But I need you to both understand,” He was looking at Lily now, and she looked down to her hands. “There is no quick fix. After everything that he’s endured, it’s quite possible that he will never be the man that he was before.”

Sirius didn’t like that answer. He jumped to his feet and kicked the chair. He opened his mouth to start shouting, swearing maybe, but then she caught his eye and he deflated.

“Come on, Red.” His shoulders dropped and he held out his hand. “Let’s get you home.”

oOo

It had been months.

Two months and seven days. Since he’d attacked her.

They told her that he wanted to see her. He wanted to see her, and they wanted him to see her.

She wanted to say no, but Sirius looked so hopeful that she couldn’t.

She’d woken up in a cold sweat, feeling his hands on her throat.

But she’d still gotten up, gotten dressed, and made her way to the hospital.

She waited outside his door like she always did, though this time she was nervous on top of feeling anxious and slightly sick. This time she was going to enter the room.

They’d moved him. This wasn’t the room that he’d attacked her in, this was the fifth floor, for people with magically caused head trauma. People who’s minds had been altered with magic. Some of them had been here for years and there was nothing the healers could do for them.

Lily hated being up here. She hated seeing all of these people and knowing that James might not ever come back to her. She might lose him to this.

“Lily!” Healer Bones, she’d finally remembered his name, stepped out of James room and smiled at her. “We’re ready for you now.”

She nodded and crossed her arms over her chest.

He frowned at her.

“I know that this is hard, but can you,” He took a breath. “Can you try to look a bit more optimistic?”

“Right,” She nodded. “Yes, of course.” She shook out her shoulders and dropped her hands back to her sides. Then she tried to smile.

Bones nodded. “He’s not going to attack you again. I promise.”

Lily felt a small burst of hope, but it quickly vanished when she entered the room and saw that Bones could easily make that promise since they had James restrained to his bed.

She stayed back by the door, kept her hands at her sides, and tried to smile at James as he stared at her.

He was just staring this time though. He didn’t look angry. Though maybe he was just trying to get them all to trust that he wasn’t going to try and kill her again, hoping that they would take off the restraints.

She hated herself for thinking that and took a step forward.

Sirius was leaning against the back wall, his arms crossed over his chest.

“It’s good to see you,” She said to James, trying to smile again.

“You hate me.” James said, his tone neither harsh nor accusatory. He said it like he was just stating a fact.

“I don’t hate you.” Lily copied his tone. “I’ve never hated you.”

James let out a harsh breath and shook his head. “You’re a liar too.”

Lily felt her heart break a little bit more. “You’ve been through a lot lately.”

James looked over at Sirius and then at Healer Bones. “They both say that I’ve had my memory tampered with.”

“That’s what the healers have told me too,” Lily nodded.

“Sirius says that you had nothing to do with what happened to me.”

“You don’t believe him?”

James clenched and unclenched his jaw, reached up to run his hand through his hair and was stopped by the restraint. “He has no reason to lie.”

“You don’t believe that either.”

James eyes snapped back to her. She was antagonizing him. She shouldn’t be.

“I would never hurt you.” She said, quietly.

He looked pained for a minute and then he leaned back against his pillows and sighed. “Why not? I hurt you.” He closed his eyes.

Lily reached up and touched her neck. “I know.” She took another step toward him. “But I can forgive you for that.”

James shook his head. “You shouldn’t. Not if you’re innocent like they say you are.” He opened his eyes. “I remember you hating me. You’ve never been very forgiving of me.”

He didn’t know what to believe. Lily wanted to look at Bones, she wanted to know how she was supposed to react to this split narrative, but she wanted to gain James’ trust and she felt like looking to the healer for help would be a step in the wrong direction.

“You have always thought that I hated you when we were kids.” Lily said, tapping her fingers against the foot of his bed. “And you’ve never believed me when I said that it wasn’t true.”

“Why did you marry me?”

Lily shoved a fist into her pocket and bit down on her tongue. “Why do you think I married you?”

James covered his face, pushing his glasses up to his forehead. “I can’t remember.” He said, “I feel like I almost can, but I can’t.”

“That’s okay,” She tasted blood. “I want to help you remember.”

oOo

It was slow work, but they did make progress.

It had been a couple of weeks, and while no one would leave the two of them alone, he didn’t have to be restrained anymore.

She was sitting on the end of his bed and they were playing exploding snaps.

“When did we start dating?” He asked.

“Seventh year.”

“I know, but when.” He could differentiate between the real and fake memories now. He said that there was something shiny about the false memories, but he still withdrew into himself almost every time they talked, and that was when she’d have to leave. If he didn’t get quiet, then he’d get loud and angry and Sirius would put himself between them until Lily left the room.

“October.” She said. “I asked you to go to Hogsmeade with me after the Gryffindor, Ravenclaw Quidditch match. You kissed me in the middle of the library. Madam Pince kicked us out. She was wearing that horrific Halloween jumper.”

He smiled. It was a small smile, but Lily felt her broken heart fusing back together. “I remember that.” She’d found that he liked details that weren’t related directly to what he was asking. Bones said that it was probably because those were not details that had been altered at all. He thought that these extra details might help ground James in the real memory of Lily.

“You got me a Halloween jumper for our first anniversary.” He almost laughed and Lily saw Sirius smiling at the two of them out of the corner of her eye.

“You wore it for a whole week before I hid it from you.” He pushed his glasses up his nose.

“I never found it either.” The card game had been forgotten, but Lily was pretty sure that it was her turn to draw a card, so she did. “Don’t know why you bought it for me if you weren’t a fan of-“

“Every time you walked in a room, you would make it sing the _Monster Mash_.” He did laugh this time, as he reached for a card of his own. Lily nearly beamed at him.

“I just wanted you to know how much I liked it.”

oOo

They got to go home three weeks after that.

No one considered James a threat now, and he hadn’t shouted at anyone in almost a month. He had even taken to asking about specific memories that he knew were altered. Real or not real. It was a simple format, made it seem almost like a game. Sometimes Lily liked the questions he asked.

“Your favorite color is yellow, real or not real?”

“We went to a Queen’s concert the summer after seventh year. Real or not real?”

Some of the questions she hated.

“No one forced you to marry me. Real or not real?”

“You never cheated on me. Real or not real?”

Five days after James had come home, Sirius left them alone for the first time. He said that he was running an errand, but it felt like it was a test. Living like they had been wasn’t sustainable. James eventually had to be trusted to be left alone, the two of them eventually had to work out what they were to one another now. Sirius had a life outside of being a constant babysitter. Not that he had complained at all, not that he would.

James made them tea.

She sat at the table and watched him. He looked confused for a moment when he went to fix hers for her, and she almost got up and did it herself, but then he shook his head, the fog disappearing and added two sugars and a splash of milk.

“Thank you,” She took the cup when he held it out to her. 

He was quiet as he sat down, and while that usually meant that he was going to need his space, he had a peaceful look about him now. She smiled at him.

“I remember.” He said, setting his cup down so he could put a hand on her knee.

“What do you remember?” She asked cautiously. He usually tried not to touch her. When he handed her things, not even their fingers would brush. She wanted to cover his hand with her own, but she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it either. She craved his touch, any kind of closeness she could get from him, but she wasn’t going to push him.

He was grinning at her, that boyish grin of his that had always made her go weak in the knees.

The hope and relief started bubbling up again. 

“I remember why you married me.”

“Oh?” She hadn’t said it. She hadn’t wanted to push him, she hadn’t wanted to hear him accuse her of lying.

“You love me.” He squeezed her leg gently. “Real or not real?”

She put the cup down, felt the tears on her cheeks before she knew that they were falling. “Real.” She said, gripping his hand tightly. “So very real.”

Things were never going to be like they were before, but they were going to be okay.


End file.
